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The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

Michael Brooks

Michael Brooks, “Prester John: A Reexamination and Compendium of the Mythical Figure Who Helped Spark European Expansion.” Diss, U of Toledo, 2010.

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The Book of John Mandeville
The Book of John Mandeville (c. 1356-1360)

Compiled in the mid-fourteenth century, the notorious Book of John Mandeville had a lasting effect on European understanding of world geography well into the eighteenth century.

This medieval bestseller was translated into English, Latin, Spanish, German Dutch, Bohemian, Danish, and Gaelic. The oldest surviving copy, written in an Anglicized French, is dated to 1371. As with the Letter of Prester John, the Book of John Mandeville resists easy generic classification, with readers describing the text with terms including 'livre', 'geste', 'romant', 'tractatus', 'itenerarium', 'voiage' and 'trauayle' (Niayesh, 160).

Written from the persona of an almost certainly fictional English knight, "Mandeville" relates a highly imaginative journey from England to the gates of the Earthly Paradise and back (for "Mandeville" understood the world as round). Round as Mandeville's world was, the spiritual and geographical "center" remained in Jerusalem, often quipped to be the "navel" of the world during the European Middle Ages. As Rosemary Tzanaki (p.11) writes, The Book of John Mandeville depicts a "religious geography" with Jerusalem at its center, "stressing the unity of this world through its very diversity."

In his journey to the locales furthest away from Jerusalem, approaching that Earthly Paradise from which "Mandeville" finds himself barred, he journeys through Pantaxore, his name for the realm of Prester John. Referencing the theory of the antipodes, "Mandeville" comments that this land of Pantaxore lies "foot agaynst foot to Englonde."

Mandeville's version of the Prester John legend integrates the European knowledge of the Mongol Empire into the story of Prester John, even inventing a ceremony in which Prester John's daughter is ceremoniusly wed to the "grete Chane" and vice versa.

In the early seventeenth century, Samuel Purchas, an armchair traveler himself, declared Mandeville "the greatest Asian traveler that ever the world had" (qtd. in Silverberg, p. 148). The renowned British geographer Richard Hakluyt, a contemporary of Purchas, referred to Mandeville in his Principall Navigations as "eruditum et insignem Authorem" [erudite and distinguished author] (Brooks, p. 88).

Although a highly dubious travel tale, the influence of Mandeville's geographical lore on European cultural understanding of the wider world is immense: Niayesh, referencing the text's immense influence on later travelers, dubs the Mandeville character as the "knight of transmission" (155). Above all, this text remained impactful for its skillful weaving together of earlier travel narratives and its contention of a global Christendom.

Mandeville casts Prester John as the famed figurehead of an unknowable realm through which the belief he clearly inspired may persist. The book clearly cribs from earlier travel narratives and encyclopedias--including the writings of Vincent of Beauvais, John of Plano Carpini, Ascelin of Lombardia, William of Rubruck, Marco Polo, and Odoric of Pordenone-- but often expands on those accounts through a clear desire to entertain. Though the literary value of Mandeville’s text itself has been debated, its influence on later medieval literary texts cannot be denied.

Mandeville returns Prester John to his former glory, as detailed by Heng (p. 134):
An influential travel romance like Mandeville’s Travels, which strategically prefers to emphasize the older, nostalgically legendary aura of Prester John, also shrewdly prefers to underemphasize the Nestorian character of the Christianity anchored into place by the localization of the Prester John story in preceding thirteenth- and fourteenth-century historical accounts. While allowing for some variation of doctrine and practice from the Latin Church, in Prester John’s empire, the Travels vigorously underscores the ultimately universal principles of Christianity shared in common with John’s people—the most important commonalities of faith and devotion— and celebrates the piety and virtue of John’s folk: “This emperor Prester John is a Christian man, and the most part of his land also, if all be it so that they have not all the articles of our belief so clearly as we have. Nonetheless they believe in God, Father and Son and Holy Ghost; and full devout men they are and true each one to the other, and there is neither with them fraud nor guile.
By emphasizing the devout Christianity of Prester John’s people, and winking at their Nestorian difference, then, the Travels is able to present John’s empire, in its Christian ideality, as a heterotopian mirror for Europe: a mirror in which Europe might see an exotic version of itself, dressed up as a successful Christian empire that happens to be located elsewhere. Simultaneously John’s domain is also conspicuously partnered with the Khan’s imperial domain in such a way as to suggest that John’s realm functions as a kind of Christian threshold to the Khanate, a counterpart-in-empire that mimics the Great Khan’s vast imperial enterprise" (281).
The history of the Mandeville text is complex and, for many, there is no one preferred edition. The most complete edition probably remains Malcolm Letts’ edition and translation of the Egerton text.

For a succinct summary of the publication history of the Travels, see the first footnote in Moseley.

For more on the text, see Kohanski and Benson’s introduction to the TEAMS edition, available here.

Read the Middle English text online.
Read a modernized translation online.
Qara Khitai The Kara Khitai (known also as the Black Cathay) was established out of the ruins of the Chinese Liao Dynasty when, in 1124, some 200 followers of the Khitan imperial family escaped into Central Asia with their leader, Yeh-lü Ta-shih, fleeing from the Jurchen who had begun to make war on the Khitan in 1115. Within a few years, Yeh-lü Ta-shih successfully enlisted the support of a number of Turkish tribes in the area and established a formidable army.

The group's victory over the Seljuk Turks in 1141 was misunderstood in the Historia de duabus civitatibus as the deeds of an Eastern Christian potentate capable of uniting all of Christendom. This anecdote turned out not to refer to utopic Christians at all (nor Christians of any stripe), but to the Qara Khitai, led by the Buddhist (not Nestorian) Yeh-lü Ta-shih.

More specifically, Hugh's story refers to Yeh-lü Ta-shi and the Qara Khitai's 1141 defeat of Seljuk king Sanjar and his army at the Battle of Qatwan near Samarkand (not Ecbatana, as Hugh has it). Given the timing and location of this event, combined with the fact that the Qara Khitai were nominally Nestorian, it is reasonable to conclude that this event provided historians with a possible explanation for the beginning of the Prester John legend.

Traces of this historical battle also appear in Benjamin of Tudela's account of Kofar al-Turak, another early influence on the legend of Prester John. According to Brooks (pg. 77):
"Of interest to the discussion of the legend of Prester John is a passage in which Benjamin described a powerful king in the East. According to the narrative, the king’s name was Kofar-al-Turak, and this Asian king successfully destroyed the king of Persia. Benjamin claimed that Kofar-al-Turak’s forces 'slew many of the Persian army, and the king of Persia fled with only a few followers to his own country.' The account seems contemporaneous with the 1141 defeat by the Kara-Khitai of the Kara-Khanids, who were nominally vassals of the Seljuks. The idea that the forces of Islam could be defeated by conquerors from the East – especially if they were fellow Christians – no doubt was welcome news in Europe. The series of twelfth and thirteenth century papal and royal embassies to the Turkic nomads known collectively as the Mongols was in part due to the credence placed in the account of Benjamin of Tudela."
Peter Heylyn's Cosmographie Cosmographie in foure Bookes Contayning the Chrographie & Historie of the whole World and all the Principall Kingdomes, Provinces, Seas, and Isles, Thereof (1652)

Published in 1652, Peter Heylyn's Cosmographie presents readers with a universal geography in four books, one of which touches on the Prester John legend. His work was based on classical authors like Ptolemy and Pliny but also more contemporary English geographical work like that of George Abbot. The text went through several editions, with the sixth edition (1682) considered, according to Brooks (p. 205) as "highly regarded." The Cosmography was considered a standard work of European geogaphy into the eighteenth century.

Heylyn's text contains maps, including one of Prester John's empire by Dutch cartogropher Nicolas Visscher.

Most significantly, Cosmographie doubts Prester John's dual function as priest and king, which may not be surprising given the anti-Catholic sentiments of its author. Brewer (p. 239) also notes that Heylyn dismisses a circulating notion (proposed by Joseph Scaliger) that Ethiopians originally descended from Asia. Heylyn instead offers an account of an Asian Prester John and reasons that the Portuguese identification of John with Ethiopia resulted merely from linguistic misunderstanding.

Brooks (p. 167-8) excerpts Heylyn's description of the nature of Prester John's name and title:
And yet I more incline to those, who finding that the word Prestegan signifieth an Apostle, in the Persian tongue, and Prestigani, and Apostolical man: do thereupon inferr that the title of Padescha Prestigiani, and Apostolick King, was given unto him for the Orthodoxie of his belief, which not being understood by some, instead of Preste-gian, they have made Priest-John, in Latine Presbyter Johannes; as by a like mistake, one Pregent (or Prægian as the French pronounce it) commander of some Gallies under Lewis the 12, was by the English of those times called Prior John.
George Abbot's Geography
Description of the Whole Worlde (1599)

A sober view of the geographical knowledge of time, George Abbot's Geography went through nine editions between its publication in 1599 and 1664.

Brooks summarizes (p. 154)
Abbot noted that visitors to the kingdom of Prester John would find the fabled Mountains of the Moon, which he considered to be the source of the Nile River. This belief is typical for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the search for the Mountains of the Moon would continue into the nineteenth century with the expedition of John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton to reach the southern shores of Lake Victoria. Abbot also claimed that Prester John was able to extort a sizeable tribute through innovative water management techniques; in the following passage Abbot briefly explained the supposed history of Prester John’s manipulation of the flow of the Nile River:
The Princes of Ægipt have paid vnto the gouernor of the Abisines, a great tribute time out of mind: which of late, the great Turke supposing to be a custome needelesse, did deny: till the people of the Abisines by commandment
of their Prince did breake downe their dammes: and drowning Egipt, did intórce the Turke to continue his pay,
and to giue much money for the new making of them very earnestily, to his great charge, desiring a peace.
The works of Abbot and his late sixteenth century contemporaries in the field of geography continued to influence Europeans into the seventeenth century and beyond. Despite the growing body of knowledge from European explorers, merchants, and colonial officials, there continued to exist in the minds of many Europeans a distinct fascination with the fantastic kingdom of a distant Christian priest-king, and even the mounting lack of direct evidence related to Prester John’s kingdom could shake this entrenched belief.

Brooks discusses how Abbot defamiliarizes Prester John and his kingdom from Catholicism (p. 153):

Abbot described Prester John as a “a prince absolute,” and that he also had “a priestlike, or patriarchall functió, & iurisdiction among [the Abyssinians].” In Abbot’s estimation, Prester John was a “verie mightie prince, & reputed to be one of the greatest Emperors of the world.” Ever keen to understand the true religious persuasion of his subjects, the Anglican cleric assured readers that Prester John “in no sorte acknowledge[ed] any supreame prerogatiue of the B. of Rome.” This was bit of information was likely quite important to English readers, given their own recent history of estrangement with the Vatican. (153-154)

In other words, Abbot, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, capitalizes on the long history of failures among Catholics (from missionaries to Popes) to convert Prester John to Catholicism. In this way he is able to skew Prester John's reputation for iconoclasm as a means to frame Prester John as an ally to England and to Anglicanism.

Read the text.
Principall Navigations The principall navigations, voiages, and discoveries of the English nations: made by sea or over land to the most remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these 1500 years : divided into three several parts according to the positions of the regions whereunto they were directed; the first containing the personall travels of the English unto Indæa, Syria, Arabia ... the second, comprehending the worthy discoveries of the English towards the north and northeast by sea, as of Lapland ... the third and last, including the English valiant attempts in searching almost all the corners of the vaste and new world of America ... whereunto is added the last most renowned English navigation round about the whole globe of the earth (1589-1600)

In introducing his discussion of Hakluyt's text, Brooks (p. 148) cites James P. Helfers, who distinguishes The Principall Navigations as “the supreme chronicle of the English Renaissance age of discovery, and a new kind of literary document as well.” Hakluyt's texts, including, through the 1598 edition, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

It contains excerpts from William Waterman's Fardle of Facions, itself a translation of Johan Boemus's Ominum Gentium Mores, Leges and Ritus. Hakluyt's work is continued by Samuel Purchas.

Read the Principall Navigations in facsimile.

For more on the editorial strategies of Hakluyt, see Helfers.

Read about the Hakluyt Editorial Project.
Report on the Kingdom of the Congo
Relatione del reame del Congo (1591)

Here Duarte Lopes situates the capital of Prester John's kingdom in Belmalechi (Ethiopia).
Brooks summarizes how Lopes oriented himself in Africa with reference to the kingdom of Prester John (p. 145):
Lopes believed that Prester John's kingdom was separated from that of the Congo by a "well populated country [that] extends for 150 miles" and that the kingdom was bordered by the Congo, the Nile, and "the two lakes." Interestingly, Lopes seemed to be describing the region of modern-day Uganda and Rwanda; perhaps British explorers Speke, Burton, and Stanley possessed the account of Lopes in their planning of expeditions to seek the source of the Nile River.
Lopes describes the kingdom of Prester John thusly (qtd. in Brooks, p. 145):
In round numbers the empire of this Christian king has a circumference of about 4000 miles. The principal city, and where he chiefly resides and holds his Court, is called Belmalechi, and forms the seat of empire of many provinces, which are themselves ruled by kings. The territory is rich, and abounds in gold, silver, precious stones, and every kind of metal...courtiers and nobles are splendidly attired in silk robes, gold, and jewels...these people are to some extent Christians.

Brooks continues (p. 145):
There is a sober and detached quality to the text as it describes the social, economic, and political characteristics of the Kingdom of Congo, and the reader is likely to find this part of the work to be a solid source for early modern African history. The Lopes account becomes much more suspect as an accurate African historical source – although an ideal example of the power of the European desire to link up with an eastern ally - when the author broached the subject of the Kingdom of Prester John, whom he introduced as the “greatest and richest prince in all of Africa.” One might suspect that the author, while possessing relatively solid geographical knowledge of the continent, inserted snippets of folklore and earlier travel narratives in places where his direct knowledge may have been limited. Lopes next delved into a description that had its origin in one of the many versions of the Prester John legend, most likely some combination of Mandeville and one of the Letters of Prester John.

More on the Relatione (in Portuguese)
The Relatione is also available in an English translation.
Mercator World Map of 1569 Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata (1569)

An early attempt to depict a cylindrical model of the globe, Gerardus Mercator's 1569 map depicts an African kingdom of Prester John. Notably Prester John, the only ruler Mercator illustrates on the African continent, is here depicted in the style of a European king.

Brooks describes Mercator's Prester John kingdom on the upper Nile river (p. 201):
Mercator's Prester John is depicted by the mapmaker as seated on a royal throne and holding up a cross, symbolizing his dual role as temporal and spiritual leader of his empire. The inscription readers 'Prete Giam magnus imperator Abbissini'... Mercator imagined the kingdom of Prester John as being centered on the upper Nile River, evoking earlier traditions of the mighty priest-king possessing the power to regulate or shut off the flow of the life-giving Nile.

Mercator's grandson, who shared the name of this grandfather, depicts Prester John in much the same way some half-century later, in 1628.

View the map, courtesy of the National Library of Australia.
Frau Mauro Map Il mappamondo di fra Mauro (1459)

Commissioned by Portugese king Afonso V for his uncle Henry the Navigator, and created by a Venetian merchant-soldier turned hermetic monk, Fra Mauro's mappamundi represented a crowning achievement in late-medieval cartography.

As related by Brooks (p. 185), Mauro consulted Portuguese maps of travels of the Atlantic coast as one source for his world map. Brooks describes the map as a "circular planisphere drawn on parchment that has been set by curators in a wooden frame" which measured "about six feet in diameter" (p. 186).

Frau Mauro identifies Prester John's kingdom as an immense sub-Saharan African territory, with the land of "Abassia" at its center. Brooks notes that "Abassia is depicted in the map with large castles and palaces that exceed those of any other African potentate in opulence, size, and quantity." (pp. 186-7). Mauro notes that Prester John's territory "is more extensive to the south of the sources of the Nile than to the north" (Brooks, p. 190). Brooks notes that Mauro even offered a defense of his African cartography on the map, asserting that the catography of the antiquarian geographers was outdated.

In an inscription, Frau Mauro details this land as possessing qualites of the terrestrial paradise (qtd in Brooks, p. 187):
In the woods of this Abassia there is such a great quantity of honey that they do not bother to collect it. When in the winter the great rains wash these trees, that honey flows in some nearby lakes, and, thanks to the action of the sun, that water becomes like a wine, and the people of the place drink it in place of wine.
Speaking of the ruler of this land, Mauro relates
"Prester John has more than 120 kingdoms under his dominion, in which there are more that 60 different languages" (10-I6, trans. Brooks)

"Above the kingdom of Abbassia there is a very savage and idolotrous people who are separated from Abbassia by a river and by mountains, at the passes of which the kings of Abbassia have built great fortresses so that these peoples cannot pass and do harm to their country. These men are very strong and of great stature and they pay tribute to Prester John, King of Abassia, and certain thousands of these men serve him to his needs" (10-A38, trans. Brooks)

The original copy made for King Afonso has not survived.

A high-resolution version of the map is viewable couresy of the Museo Galileo.
Duarte Lopes Born in Lisbon, Duarte Lopes (fl. c. 1583) was a Portuguese priest, merchant, and explorer.

Brooks describes Lopes entry into the Prester John legend (p. 145):
News of the exploits of the Portuguese in contacting the mythical priest-king did not rapidly filter out to Europe, however, and the myth of Prester John continued to tantalize the imaginations of European monarchs and adventurers. One such voyager was who departed in 1578 on an expedition for the Spanish crown along the West and Central African coasts. His destination was the Kingdom of Congo, and he left “in a ship called the S. Antonio, belonging to an uncle of his, which was laden with various merchandise for that king." Part of his account records his dealings with the Congolese king, while other sections of the narrative discuss his fascination with the Prester John myth. The Filippo Pigafetta text relied upon information passed from Lopes to his Italian counterpart, which might have even included an original (lost) text Lopes composed in Portuguese.
Jump to the Report on the Kingdom of the Congo
New, Plaine, & Exact Mapp of Africa
Peter Heylyn's 1652 Cosmographie included a world map by Nicolas Visscher that depicted the kingdom of Prester John. Despite the fact that the Dutch cartographer came from a family of mapmakers possessed of the most contemporary cartographic information, Visscher relied heavily on classical and biblical traditions in his mapmaking, which can be see in his depiction of Prester John's kingdom.

That is not to say that his map of Africa is completely inaccurate. The shape of Africa was one of the most accurate for its time and the tropics and equator were fixed precisely. Along the border of the map, Visscher depicted various African rulers, including Prester John, depicted as a youngish crowned black man and titled "King of Abissines." As Brooks notes (p. 209), the ornamentation of Prester John is compoaratively more European than that of the other African kings depicted on the map.

Prester John's Abyssinia takes up roughly a full third of Africa, hearkening back to the tradiition established by Fra Mauro in his mappaemundi.

From Brooks (p. 209):
It is also within the imagined boundaries of the kingdom of Prester John that Visscher included quite a vareity of mythical and legendary items beleived by late medieval and early modern Europeans to exist in Africa. Visscher included a "Zair Lake" from which the Congo and Nile Rivers supposedly emanated, which was a body of water that Visscher claimed was "where ye Tritons and Mermaids are said to be."

The southern borders of the laand of Prester John are the location of the Mountains of the Moon, also believed by Europeans to be the source of the Nile River.
Explore “New, Plaine, & Exact Mapp of Africa”
Zar'a Yaqob One of the most powerful rulers of the late Middle Ages, Zar'a Yaqob (1399-1468) served as Emperor of Ethiopia from 1434-1468. Brooks describes the gradual process that brought awareness of Zara Yaqob to Europe (p. 73):
Accounts of the material wealth, spiritual piety, and political strength of Zar’a Yaqob must certainly have spread northward up the Nile River and along established trading routes with merchants and travelers. Fifteenth-century accounts demonstrated an increasing tendency toward locating Prester John in Abyssinia, and this was especially the case with the Portuguese.
Mercator Map (1628) This map, created by Gerardus Mercator, grandson to the Gerardus Mercator who in 1569 created the map more likely to be called the "Mercator Map," follows the tradition of his grandfather by placing a white European looking Prester John in Africa. Both Mercator maps were not well known until they were made more popular by fellow Flemish cartographer Jodocus Hondius.

As Brooks explains (p. 202),
His 1628 map of Africa included an illustrated depiction of the seemingly ageless Prester John; in this scanned image, one can observe that the passing of almost six decades between grandfather and grandson resulted in few changes to the ways in which Prester John had been imagined by European cartographers.

The 1628 Mercator map again depicts a seated Prester John with a cross, and the mythical potentate still faces east. The priest-king in this image wears a flowing royal robe instead of what appears to be a mandilion on Prester John in the 1569 map. On the head of Prester John is a more elabroate crown in the 1628 image, implying at least a sense of continuity in the perceived importance heldy by the illustrator twoard the priest-king in continental and regional affairs. Both Mercator maps... provided a prominent place for the kingdom of Prester John. While some Europeans in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had begun the process of moving away from a strong belief in the power and wealth of Prester John, clearly the notion of this mighty priest-king remained a source of fascination for many learned Europeans, and the Mercator maps serve as evidence of this continued allure. Yet despite his innovative techniques, Gerardus Mercator and his work remained relatively unknown beyond a small circle of geographical and cartographical experts, and it would take the efforts of another Flemish cartographer to bring Mercator's projections to a wider audience.
Mountains of the Moon Brooks describes the antiquarian origin of this notion (p. 35):
Among the geographical features consistent between Ptolemy’s Geographia and the legend of Prester John was the idea of a snow-capped mountain range that served as the source of the Nile River. Ptolemy referred to these as the “Mountains of the Moon,” and this magical landform was a regular feature of many of the accounts of the kingdom of Prester John. In the following passage Ptolemy described the importance of these hypothetical mountains:
Around this bay the Aethiopian Anthropophagi dwell, and from these toward the west are the Mountains of the Moon, from which the lakes of the Nile receive snow water; they are located at the extreme limits of the Mountains of the Moon.